Larian Studios defends its use of AI in game development

Larian Studios made a big impression at The Game Awards 2025 with the announcement of a new Divinity game. Afterwards, Swen Vincke, CEO of the Belgian studio, gave an interview to Bloomberg in which he discussed several topics.

Of course, AI was on the agenda. Vincke confirmed that his teams use artificial intelligence to “explore ideas, flesh out PowerPoint presentations, develop concept art, and write draft texts.” He added, however, that no elements generated by generative AI appear in the final version of any of the company’s games.

Unfortunately, this statement sparked controversy on social media. So much so that Swen Vincke had to speak out publicly to defuse the situation. He pointed out that Larian has a team of 72 artists. Obviously, they will not be replaced by AI.

“Holy fuck guys we’re not ‘pushing hard’ for or replacing concept artists with AI.

We have a team of 72 artists of which 23 are concept artists and we are hiring more. The art they create is original and I’m very proud of what they do. I was asked explicitly about concept art and our use of Gen AI. I answered that we use it to explore things. I didn’t say we use it to develop concept art. The artists do that. And they are indeed world class artists.

We use AI tools to explore references, just like we use google and art books. At the very early ideation stages we use it as a rough outline for composition which we replace with original concept art. There is no comparison.

We’ve hired creatives for their talent, not for their ability to do what a machine suggests, but they can experiment with these tools to make their lives easier.”